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MEMBERSHIP SITES CAN EARN YOU EVEN MORE MONEY IN INTERNET MARKETING

There are many different ways you can make money with your internet business. Most people first starting out either promote affiliate products or they decide to have their own product.

For many, this product is often an e-book. While it is possible to make good money selling e-books, that is only one option. Another option is to start a membership site.

The two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, a good internet business sells several different products so that they can have income coming in from several different sources. The main point is that a membership site can seriously boost your income.

When people buy an e-book once they make the purchase you probably won’t get any more money from that sale. With a membership site (and this will depend on the type of payment schedule you decide on) the customer will pay you more than once.

Are you getting excited yet? Once you’re done reading this report, you’ll have all the tools you need to be able to start your own membership site.

WHAT IS A MEMBERSHIPSITE EXACTLY?

A membership site is a website where only its members can access the information. Not all sites require money – there are free ones that require a username and a password. A membership site is a website where only its members can access the information. Not all sites require money – there are free ones that require a username and a password.

The one thing they do have in common is that they’re exclusive. Not just “anyone” can access the information. You need to be special in some way – either by paying or obtaining the correct login credentials.

Besides having free member sites and those that require payment, they can take on different forms such a blog or a forum. The format you choose will depend on your needs.

WHY EVERY INTERNET MARKETER NEEDSAT LEAST ONE MEMBERSHIP SITE

As discussed above, it is a good idea to start a membership site if you want to increase your profits. Here’s a list of the benefits to owning one.

• Dominate the competition in your niche If you have a membership site, you’ll stand out amongst the people who have a score of e-books but nothing else to offer their customers.

• Get more money out of your list You may have heard that “the money is in the list”. And, you’ll want to get as much money from your list members as you can. A membership site is the perfect way to do this.

• Increase customer loyalty If your site has great content and you respond promptly to all queries, a membership site will increase customer loyalty a lot better than selling individual products. This is because the customer will feel as if you’re more accessible.

• Develops a sense of community Membership sites that have a forum help encourage a sense of community. So not only do the members interact with you, but they can interact with each other. This is a good selling point and a benefit for the owner of the site because it is another thing that will help increase your customer’s loyalty.

• Great way to build a list If you want to start a free membership site, or offer portions of your membership site for no cost, it can present an effective way to build a list.

• Develop passive income Although internet marketing is a great career, the money can be a little unstable. A membership site is a good way to not only make more money, but to make the income you do bring in a lot steadier.

• They don’t need to be complicated A lot of people assume that a membership site is complicated. Not necessarily. There are plenty of options that are simple, such as exclusive content delivered via autoresponder.

Let’s look at the math. say you have a membership site that offers exclusive content related to your niche. If you charge $19.95 a month and have 100 subscribers, that translates to nearly $2000 profit and all you needed to do was refresh the content and make sure the site is running properly.

HOW DO MEMBER SITES WORK?

When a member pays you money, they are then allowed access into the site. But since there are several different formats you can use, the technical aspects of setting up and running a membership site will differ. You can choose to take the easy route and set it up via autoresponder. Or, you can have a site with multiple bells and whistles including forum, blog, videos, and other content.

You’ll need to assess your customer base and determine what they’ll want. For example, if your in the health and fitness niche and you have a weight loss membership site, your customers may require different tools than if you had a membership site on how to make money blogging.

If you decide to open up a free membership site, all your members will need is the right membership information.

WHAT ABOUT TECHNICALSKILLS?

You may be wondering about the technical aspect of starting a membership site. How do you do it exactly? Well, there are a lot of different options. Here are some technologies to consider:

• PHP based membership site If you know PHP you understand that you can set the site up to require a username and password. When customers pay you they’ll get the login information.

• Autoresponder based site Once the customers pay you they’re information will be added to the autoresponder. Their content will be delivered via email.

• Use a membership creator package There are some software packages out there that are designed to help you create a membership site. You may want to ask around to see which are best.

If you don’t have the technical skills or the time to handle the technical details you can always outsource.

SHOULD YOU MAKE IT AFREE SITE OR A PAID ONE?

The first thing you need to decide is if you will set up a free membership site or a paid membership site. There are some good points for each.

Benefits of a Free Membership Site

• Can help you build a list
• Entice people into the full membership
• To protect your sensitive content
• Build a sense of community among members

Benefits of a paid membership site

• Make more money internet marketing
• Develop a loyal customer base
• Have a steady stream of passive income
• Build a sense of community among members

Those lists are by no means complete. However, it is a good list to help you decide if you want to take their money or not. Keep in mind that one membership site can have a free and a paid version. The free version can help you build your list and also be used as a teaser to get people into the full membership.

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BECOMING AN AUTHOR

Writing an ebook is one of the easiest ways to become an author. These days, you don't need a publishing house or literary agent to get published. The Internet and modern software packages have made it possible for anyone who wants to create his/her own ebook. Even if you decide you don't have a knack for writing, there are other ways to put together an informative piece of work that will sell and will help to get you labeled as an expert. All it takes to start is having a passion for or knowledge about some popular niche that you want to market in ebook format.

FINDING YOUR NICHE

People who want to become authors usually have a specialty that they want to pursue. However, it is a wise business owner who finds the hot niches first and then goes out to write about them. This way, you know there already is a market for the ebook before you even put a single word to paper. While you do want to go into something that sets you on fire, there is probably one angle above others that will help it to sell more. Remember that people will buy ebooks because they have a problem that they want solved or they need more information on a specific issue that will enhance their lives. If your passion is jewelry, you may find that an ebook on how to pick out an engagement ring might be a hot topic. You want your niche to be specific enough to attract the demographic you already have as an audience, but not so wide that it seems too broad-based to offer any useful information.

If you're not sure where to start, check out hot topics on popular blogs by going to techcrunch.com. See what excites people and what questions people have about a certain topic or dilemma in their lives. Look at the news, see what's on everyone's mind, and try to develop a topic niche that can help address those issues. Right now, economic topics are very much in demand from saving money to making money in a tight economy.

FLAUNT YOUR CREDENTIALS

The author is just as important as the topic, and you want to flaunt your credentials if you have them. Give the reader some idea of why you are especially qualified to write this ebook. Your credentials don't have to be a Ph.D., but they can be some inspiring story that shows why you are the one to help your customers resolve some issue in their lives. Credentials come in many forms, not all of them being academic. They come in life experience, business achievements, and the school of hard knocks. Whatever it is that makes you qualified, make sure your reader knows why you wrote your book.

Writing Is Easy, Right?

Many people who have never sat down to write an actual article think that writing as a craft is simple. You just start with one word, and you follow that with another. It's also usually all in your native language. How hard can that be, right? Well, once they start to write, they may find that they don't have a clue on where to start. If they've never written an ebook, they may not understand how to properly organize their thoughts so that enough information is conveyed in an easy and highly digestible form for the reader. In fact, once they sit down to look at a blank sheet of paper, they may actually freeze because they have no set plan in place. That's why it's important to sketch out an outline before you start. Let's first take a look at how long an average ebook might be and how to set up chapters to fill the pages.

WHAT’S A GOOD LENGTH?

In general, ebooks can range from 50 to 100 pages. Unlike published books that range in the 200- to 300-page range, ebooks are much shorter since they are electronic in nature and are meant for an audience that isn't reading them like a novel. They are informational mostly, although adding some humor and entertainment is permissible. People who buy ebooks are looking for solutions, not entertainment, and they want it to be informative, not pure fluff. They also want it to be a quick read, as they're used to reading short Web articles or even short reports. For this audience, 50 pages is enough, but never exceed 100 pages.

YOUR OUTLINE

Within those 50 pages, it's common to see about 10 chapter headings. That gives you about five pages for each major topic in your ebook. There's no right or wrong way to divide chapters up, and you can make some longer and others shorter, but on average, most will be five pages long of written text. You can add pictures, but those shouldn't count towards the text. That means that when you sit down to brainstorm your ebook, you will want 10 main headings.

Within those 10 chapter headings, you may end up with several subheadings. These break out your major topic into easily digestible packets of information that people can scan via the table of contents. We will discuss how to automate the creation of the table of contents so that each of those headings and subheadings with corresponding page numbers is inserted at the front of your book. For now, realize that you will need to brainstorm an outline with 10 major points and three or more subheadings each.

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INTRODUCTION

If you want to make big sales online you need to have at least one best selling product that constantly sells well for you. The ideal situation would of course be to have several best selling products… but that part comes later. First you have to start with one product, and that’s what we’ll be looking at in this report. Once you have that, it’s a case of repeating that success in the future and building your business from there.

So let’s go through this step by step and see how it can be done.

WHAT TYPE OF PRODUCT SHOULD YOU SELL?SHOULD YOU SELL?

We’re not talking about the specific product here; we’re talking about what form the product takes. This is important because it can have a real effect on how you handle those sales once they start coming in.

So let’s see the two basic types of product you have to choose from:

TANGIBLE PRODUCTS

Tangible means something that you can touch, so for our purposes this would be anything that would need to be sent through the mail. From DVDs to gadgets, anything that you can put into a Jiffy bag and mail to your customer is a tangible product.

The advantage with these is that you have an actual physical product to sell, but the disadvantage is that there are a lot more risks to take with them. Supposing you take in some stock of a product that isn’t selling at the moment in the hope of turning it into a best seller… and it doesn’t sell? You’re left with plenty of stock taking up space, and you’ve lost money as a result.

There is a better way if you want to go the tangible goods route – and in fact there are two options for you here. Firstly you could become an affiliate marketer and refer other people to tangible products sold by a third party. This means you refer the sale, you get a percentage of that sale for your efforts, and the third party that stocks the product takes care of the physical process of sending it out to the customer.

Your second option is to get into dropshipping. This is a similar process but the difference is normally that while the company processes the order and sends it to the customer, it is often sent so it looks as if it came directly from you.

The other difference is that the customer places the order with you, and you then place the order – having taken your commission off first – with the customer’s information added in as the delivery details.

This obviously involves more work but you will get your commission up front and therefore you won’t need to wait until you reach the commission payout level that is set by the site you are using for your affiliate products.

INTANGIBLE PRODUCTS

Intangible means something that cannot be touched. For our purposes here that points directly to products which need to be downloaded. This can include reports, newsletters, eBooks and even some items of software or applications.

Now the advantages of these are very clear – first of all they are all based on information, so if you want to create your own product from scratch it is far easier to do it with an intangible and downloadable product than it is to do it any other way.

Secondly you will have the advantage of offering the product instantly. The customer gets access to their copy the second they have paid for it; no waiting for a few days to receive it in the mail. This is a big selling feature and worth bearing in mind.

Thirdly there is a lot less risk in taking on (or creating) an intangible product because you don’t have to shell out any cash to stock it in the first place. If it doesn’t sell you don’t lose anything and you aren’t left with that huge and worrying pile of stock.

A lot of people start off by promoting other people’s downloadable products as affiliates, and then branch off into creating their own once they have explored the market a bit and have more knowledge of how to do it.

So those are your options. Let’s now look at the next step.

IDENTIFYING AN UNKNOWN PRODUCTUNKNOWN PRODUCT

This begs one big question – how do you find something that no one knows about?

It’s a worthy question, but if you know how to answer it you’ll be much more likely to find and promote the products that no one else has found yet.

Now for a product to be unknown, that clearly points to the fact that it exists already, so it won’t include anything you come up with yourself. We will touch on this later on though so if you do have ideas you’ll get to know more in a while.

The only completely unknown product that you will ever come across is one that is brand new and about to launch. It IS possible to find out about these if you move in the right circles though, and the best way to become a promoter of this type of product is to subscribe to plenty of email newsletters by some of the biggest names in internet marketing. These people know the power of getting an army of affiliates to help them launch their new products for them, so you can get in on the ground floor on plenty of occasions here.

The other type of unknown product is one that has been around for a while and just not taken off. When you think about a best seller, you will think of something that EVERYONE knows about, whether they have one or not. Think of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books, for example, or the DVD of “Titanic”, or any one of hundreds of other products. Even if you don’t have it yourself you will know people who do.

What we’re trying to do here is to turn a product that hasn’t made many sales into one that everyone has heard of. That’s how you get a best seller – and the cash that goes with it.